I was talking recently with a colleague about crafting content for mobile. “You don’t actually write for mobile,” he said. “You write for the web. People just read it when they find it on their smartphone.”

That’s a pretty common assumption. Just yesterday an item from Business to Community crossed my feed that noted, “Too many business owners think that all they have to do is convert their regular desktop site into a mobile-friendly one.”

It would be great if it were that easy. There is ample research, though, revealing dramatic differences between how people read a computer screen and how they read on their phones. Knowing how to write for mobile is even more important when you look at some of the latest numbers from Facebook. It wasn’t that long ago that Facebook announced it had surpassed 1 billion monthly active users. That number has risen to nearly 1.8 billion users, 1 billion of whom access Facebook solely on smartphones. One billion people also access Facebook daily, meaning a lot of your regular readers never see what you wrote on the desktop screen for which it was intended.

We are quickly becoming a mobile society. Even my wife has given up using a desktop computer. She does everything on her smartphone or tablet. I can’t remember the last time she even touched a keyboard.

For communicators, this means we have to craft our messages for mobile consumption.

Back in the late 1990s, I presented more than 50 full-day workshops on “Writing for the Wired World.” It was a hot topic and I was one of the first communicators to deliver a workshop specifically targeting PR and communication professionals. (Some of you probably attended one of those workshops.) While I don’t have any plans to hit the road for 50 day-long workshops on writing for mobile, I am presenting a one-time webinar covering what you need to know to start writing effectively for smartphone screens.

In the webinar, I will share a summary of some of the most important research about how people read their phones and offer vital recommendations for how to write in order to accommodate those behaviors.

Register today for the “Writing for Mobile” webinar at noon EST on Wednesday, December 14. Your registration covers you and everyone in your department, and you’ll also get access to the video replay of the webinar to watch as often as you like. I’ll also distribute a one-page cheat sheet on writing for mobile to all registrants.